A position exists, for a Research Assistant/Associate in the Department of Engineering, to work on the Next Generation Converged Digital Infrastructure project funded by EPSRC and BT examining next generation telecommunications networks. The Research Assistant/Associate will work with the Distributed Information and Automation Laboratory (DIAL) at the Institute for Manufacturing. The researcher will focus on the development of the supervisory or ‘knowledge layer’ for the system – an approach for the control and management of the network of service and communications nodes. It is anticipated that this supervisory layer will comprise interacting software agents which mirror or twin with physical nodes and provide a coordinated network level management of the nodes. The development of this supervisory layer will draw on developments in other industrial domains and will particularly focus on the management of the operations of the large number of nodes in the face of disruption and change. In addition to this principle responsibility, the researcher will be expected to contribute to other research projects and activities within DIAL.